Wednesday, November 6, 2013

King: Council's silence was appropriate on Champions

When City Council balked on supporting Mayor Steve Bach's $218 million City for Champions tourist

click to enlarge

Courtesy city of Colorado Springs

King: Council was right.

extravaganza, it had good reason. There were a lot of unanswered questions, Council members said.

Now, an independent third party analyst has vindicated the Council with a 58-page report the pretty much slams the proposal and criticizes all of the four projects included in the proposal: a downtown ballpark/events center, Olympic museum, UCCS sports medicine center and Air Force Academy visitors center.

Lack of funding and development details are the crux of that criticism. It said the proposal was worthy of only $31.4 million of the $82.1million the city is seeking.

As we went to press yesterday, we didn't have room to include observations from Council President Keith King, so we offer them in full here:

The ESP report verifies the complex nature of the City for Champions proposal. I believe Council made the appropriate decision to remain silent. In all these types of proposals, the risks must be weighed against the benefits. In the original application, the projects did not accomplish the programs objectives. Hence, the evaluation stated: As described in the report, "none of the four project components have met either the financial or development readiness criteria". I am proud of Council for being diligent and examining the proposal. We will hold a town hall meeting when the revised version is analyzed by ESP to determine what the citizens of Colorado Springs think. It will be after that we will decide whether or not to take a position on the proposal.

The city has until Friday to offer revisions to the proposal for consideration by the state Economic Development Commission, due in December to decide whether to give the project state money.